More Foreigners to Vegas?

[Thomas]

Exerpts of this story by Benjamin Spillman were taken from http://www.casinocitytimes.com/news/...ntentID=164337.


LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- A proposal to make it easier for foreign travelers to visit the United States could be a jackpot for Southern Nevada's tourism industry, especially if it doubles the number of Koreans visiting America as projected.

The proposal, which could go before the U.S. Senate as early as next week, would authorize the Department of Homeland Security to increase the number of nations whose citizens are eligible for the Visa Waiver Program, a list that now includes 27 countries. Although the changes don't specify which countries would be added, the criteria favor friendly states such as some in Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and South Korea, the fifth-largest overseas source for Las Vegas tourism.

For Las Vegas the changes have the potential to increase the amount of spending by Koreans alone by more than $120 million annually -- and that doesn't include gambling.

For starters, Koreans and other international travelers would be likelier to make advance reservations in places like Las Vegas if they didn't have to worry about U.S. officials denying their visa applications because of a bureaucratic error, said Eun Seok Kim, minister-counselor for congressional affairs at the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C.

"When you are not sure you are going to get the visa, you cannot go ahead and make the deposit with the credit card," said Kim, who added the average Korean visitor spends about $3,500 during a trip to the United States. "You are losing huge amounts of money."

Kim said adding his nation to the list of waiver countries would increase Korean visitation to America annually from about 860,000 to 1.6 million.

The proposal to ease restrictions on foreign travel comes at a time when overseas visitation to the United States, as well as Las Vegas, has remained stagnant for several years.

The foreign travel slump is of such concern to Las Vegas that a forum on the issue earlier this week attracted about 200 gambling industry insiders. The forum drew heavyweights from Nevada's biggest resorts such as Wynn Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay and Bellagio. Terry Lanni, chairman of MGM Mirage, which has 10 properties on the Strip including Bellagio, The Mirage and MGM Grand, was one of those in the audience.

On Thursday a Bush administration official said children could be exempted from a plan to require travelers to show passports at American land and sea borders. The move is expected to benefit church groups, youth sports teams and school trips when the passport requirements go into effect in 2008.

"We want to make it easier," Porter said. "But we also want to make it more efficient so it is more secure."